


Human

by FlickeringWitchlight



Category: Pretty Little Liars
Genre: Alternate Universe - Vampire, F/F, kind of romance kind of not, wren/spencer is mentioned
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-16
Updated: 2015-08-16
Packaged: 2018-04-15 02:42:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,360
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4590006
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FlickeringWitchlight/pseuds/FlickeringWitchlight
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The assignment was simple: get a picture of something that proves vampires are the ones behind the killings in the city.</p><p>AKA, five times Aria found the same vampire girl and the one time the vampire girl found her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Human

**Author's Note:**

> this is 100% unedited. i'm sorry.

  * **1**



The first day Aria met Spencer, it was in the middle of the night with a camera hanging around her neck and a coat much too big pulled up around her. The cold was biting through to her skin, making her jump up and down as she walked along the streets in hope that she'd get warm in a split second, but more hoping she could just find something to take a picture of and get back home. The assignment was simple: get a picture of something that proves vampires are the ones behind the killings in the city.

 

In the last three months fifteen bodies have been found in the small city. All ravaged and torn apart. Her boss thinks it's a message from the vampires, and she remembers asking him to say that again, not because she thinks vampires are fictional, but listen, boss, they're making demands for blood banks! She did an article on that last week! She even investigated a town being built called Ravenswood specifically for vampires to live away from humans to avoid temptation. Then he tells her, _"Listen, Aria, the vampires didn't come out. They didn't make this decision to be part of our world so intimately. They were pushed out, exposed like aliens in 1995. They don't want to be buddies. They want to kill."_

Aria was so confused about the aliens part she just accepted the assignment without another word and left. Of course, she didn't really think that it was nearly winter and she didn't have a good coat or boots yet and now she was stuff walking through slush, kicking away dead leafs and bitter cold snipping at her nose in the middle of the night. Did her boss care she might be killed tonight? No, but it was a full moon and that's when all the killings were happening, so here she was listening to a distance wolf howling and the only part of her body that could relax did. At least werewolves weren't real. Right?

Wouldn't they have been exposed along with the vampires?

Aria stands on her tiptoes, investing a cracked window and the empty room beyond it of the abandoned building. She had pepper spray in her pocket, probably wouldn't do anything for a vampire, but it made her feel safe to walk the streets when the only other people out where a few dead beat cops sitting in cars half asleep, not even acknowledging her. It suddenly becomes painfully aware she's alone on the streets, despite drunk people stumbling down the sidewalk paths.

She peers down an alley and see's a small black mass in the darkness.  _Don't be a dead body,_ she thinks as she ventures in, camera in her hands, dim screen picking up even the small details as she raises it, zooming in on the dark mass.

Then, it moves.

"Help," It croaks quietly.

Step forward and face certain death? She heard of a serial killing vampire that would pretend to be injured to lure in it's victims. Or, step forward and help a human who might be hurt?

She lets go of her camera, letting it hang heavily around her neck like a massive weight as she steps forward. In the dark, all she can make out is long dark hair.

"Are you okay?" Aria asks, because it's all she can think of to say.

"Something bit me." They reply.

"'Something'?" Aria asks.

The body leans forward, hands reaching out, grasping onto her jacket tightly. "I don't know what it was. I can't remember. It seems so long ago."

Aria opens her mouth to reply when they lean forward further, and she can see their mouth starting to open, and before she can move and run, before she can even get up from the ground, teeth are sinking into her neck and she does scream.

 

  * **2**



There's a scar on her neck. She used to hide it with scarves during the winter, and during the spring she could conceal it with makeup, but as summer started to roll around, the only real option was chokers, and Aria had bought exactly three chokers in hopes it would work and every single one of them were too thin and didn't cover it, or too loose around that it hung more like an collar for a pet on a setting too loose. So, instead, she stares at the scar in the mirror, tilting her head as she rubs the makeup over it again for the third time that day, right before heading home from work, which wasn't the same job.

She'd gotten fired. Well, she should say it was a mutual decision to leave. After being attacked by the vampire, she couldn't bring herself to walk home at night on her own. She couldn't take pictures of them, couldn't write about them, couldn't hear the word without slinking back and having to suppress the urge to scrap her nails across the scar. No, she wasn't turned, but she almost wished she had been. It'd be easier than being human and having this scar on her neck.

Her job now, waitressing at an old diner, usually got her home right before the sun started to go down, but not today. Today, all her lovely coworkers were either sick or pretending to be. One left early, the other tossed the keys at her and told her to lock up, and she had to stay late. Wonderful, she thinks as the sun settles down and the moon rises up. The first time in nearly eight months since she walked home alone at night.

She keeps one hand wrapped around tightly on her purse strap, keys wrapped around one finger, and her other hand with a finger on the trigger of the pepper spray. In the eight months, humans developed a version that would work against vampires. Not as well as against humans, but enough that she could get to safety.

Then, there in the dark when she's still a block from her home, amidst a drunk crew of teenage humans stumbling down the streets, she see's her. The vampire. The same dark brown hair spilling down her shoulders, head tilted back in a laugh, and Aria freezes in her place, half hidden by a car, but it doesn't take long for the smile to slowly drift from the vampire's face as she slows, looking around the street before catching her eyes.

Neither of them move for a long time, even after the vampire's friends call back to her.

"One second," They call back, and they look both ways, they look both ways! A vampire looks both ways before crossing the street and Aria is so frozen in her place she can't even run, like running would do much against a vampire.

She finally remembers how to move her feet when the vampire is standing a few yards away in front of her, and she stumbles backwards.

"Leave me alone," She sputters out.

"I'm, uh," The vampire stops and smiles, and she can't tell whether or not it's  _my friends might be human but they'll help me kill you_ type of smile or a  _gosh this is so embarrassing!_ smile. "I just wanted to say sorry."

"Sorry?" Aria asks, a little too loudly. "Sorry?"

"For, you know," The vampire brings up a hand, touching a space on their neck and Aria notices that she's wearing a choker. Dark black, thick, wrapped around her neck like a snake. If vampires could be choked to death, Aria wishes it would happen right now. "I just wanted to say sorry."

 

  * **3**



Three months passes by of Aria's shift at the diner going later and later, more nights of pepper spray she's no longer sure if she has the courage to use digging into her palm, of eyes darting around at every sound because  _really_ if she see's that vampire one more time, she's sure it means she's dead. And yet, she starts to wonder how many humans that pass her at night are really humans. Is that cop in the car a human? Is the teenager stumbling up the steps of the apartment complex human, or just faking it? Can vampires get drunk?

She lets out a heavy sigh as she shoves the key into her apartment door, stopping only at the sound of the stairs creaking behind her and she turns, half expecting her next door neighbor that doesn't ever really speak to her after spotting the scar on her neck one time, but instead her heart jumps and her body freezes and she has two steps until she's safe in her room, and she can't move.

"Oh, hey," The vampire says to her. "You live here?"

"Are you following me?" She asks quickly.

"No, I... I moved in a week ago." They say, stepping up the rest of the way. "It's the only apartment in the area that will take me."

"So the land lord knows you're a vampire?" Aria asks, hand tightening on the knob of her door. "You showed him your papers?"

The papers, which were implemented three months after vampires were exposed, were given to every single person. Humans had them, a plastic card and a pile of papers proving they were human, signed by doctors at the hospital, issued by the government. Vampires had them, too, it made it easier for the government to keep tabs on them, and easier for places like apartments to refuse someone. Everyone got tested at least once a month. If you missed, a warrant was out for your arrest. Aria can still feel the place where they took her blood.

"Of course I did," They reply. "By the way, I'm Spencer."

"I don't care." Aria says before she can stop herself, and she slams the door behind her and collapses against the ground.

 

  * **4**



Their paths cross less than Aria would think. Occasionally, when she's leaving for work or coming back, she'll see the door close just as she's getting up the stairs. They've passed on the steps only twice, and Aria keeps her eyes straight ahead, her jaw clenched, and Spencer keeps her eyes on the floor below her, like neither exist but are still taking up too much space.

Aria doesn't talk to Spencer, but when she hears the steps creak at night she rushes to the door, peering through the peephole, catching delivery guys or other residents walking around. Never Spencer. Only once does she see the drunk friends with Spencer that night come by. Spencer leaves more often than people visit.

Tonight, though, when Aria is curled up on her chair watching an old movie and tossing popcorn into the decorative bowl on her table, does she stop at the sound of stairs creaking again. She'd gotten better at the habit of ignoring it, letting it go and eventually she'd fall asleep with the thought accompanying her of, Spencer might really be friendly.

But tonight, she can hear Spencer's voice followed by a laugh and she gets out of her chair so quickly the popcorn is left spilling across the floor and she's sure everyone can hear her feet as they hit the hardwood floor as she sprints across to the door, stumbling to a stop in front of it, looking through at a delivery boy handing her a pizza.

Pizza?

Aria throws open the door without really thinking of a plan and the two stop abruptly, turning to look at her. "Pizza?"

The two look so confused that it finally starts to set in what Aria said and her face burns as she starts to speak quickly, "She's a vampire."

Spencer smiles and says, "I have friends over."

"Friends?" Aria says, just as confused as before.

"Human friends." Spencer elaborates. "I can't have human friends?"

"No." Aria says too quickly, then shuts the door again.

 

  * **5**



The next day, there's a knock on her door. The first time she ignores it. The second time, she groans and slowly gets up off the couch, and the third, she almost yells for them to have a little patience and she pulls open the door, Spencer on the other side with her mouth open and her face twisted a little in anger.

"I can have human friends." She says quickly. "I spent my entire life with human friends, I spent my entire life as a human. I bit you that night on accident because the guy I thought really cared about me was only using me and his status as a doctor to pass off as human. Did you know if vampires don't register, we don't have the ability to buy any type of blood to sustain ourselves? He used me as a personal blood bag so he could still have all the things you humans have. You know what I mean? I mean the nice apartments. The people who don't look at you as if you're branded. I don't get that ability because I was left for dead by the dumpster like trash and I didn't mean to attack you, but I did, and I'm sorry."

"Well-"

"No, I'm not done." Spencer says quickly. "Okay, so maybe I can't think of anything of else, but I'm not done. I thought my life was going to be great until vampires showed up and it was literally turned upside down, and I'm sorry you were the one that was there in the alley and i'm sorry I attacked you and I'm sorry you don't wear a camera around your neck or think of delivery guys as anything but a cheap way for me to get a meal."

"Are you done?" Aria asks.

"No," Spencer says again. "Probably not ever, but, whatever. I can't think of anything else."

"Well," Aria says quietly. "I'm sorry I said you couldn't have human friends."

"I'm sorry I yelled at you." Spencer replies.

"I'm not going to let you in, if that's what you think," Aria says.

"Of course not." She answers. "I didn't think you would."

Aria smiles, and she's not sure why, but she does and Spencer smiles back.


End file.
